FFXIV: A Child’s Cry

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Having not played Endwalker yet, I’m certain that this stuff is important, they’ve hinted that it’s important in SB patches, but I don’t know why yet. It’s got some good thematic material, though.

Chapter 44: The Arrow

 

Chapter 45: A Child’s Cry

“It went that way!” “Find it, catch it!” The Maelstrom soldiers were shouting to each other, the entirety of Camp Overlook in an uproar. Aentfryn had gathered something about Titan’s imminent summoning, and a kobold being spotted on the edge of the camp. The Maelstrom wanted to capture it to question it about Titan, and they were acting like utter fools about it. This was one reason why he disliked Grand Companies. Large groups of people acting together became stupid. Continue reading →

FFXIV: The Arrow

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We’re back! on! track! Let’s goooooo

I guess canonically the WoD arc (3.4) comes before Zurvan (3.5?) but oh well.

Y’ever go to, like, a museum in Europe and look at those suits of plate armour with the chemical etching all over? Gorgeous. (This one’s from the Gravensteen in Ghent)

Chapter 43: The Demon of Meracydia

 

Chapter 44: The Arrow

Dinner with Aymeric was as lovely as it always was, Achiyo reflected as she sipped her wine. The food was delicious, and Aymeric’s company was as pleasant and heartwarming as ever. Though… she was finding the red wine a bit strong-bodied for her taste. She preferred the white wines, but that would apparently not go with the red meat, slow-cooked in exotic spices and more wine until it was nigh-falling apart on the plate… Kekeniro and Vivienne were with her this time; R’nyath, who often also came, was busy with Hilda, and Vivienne had put on a show of reluctance but agreed to take his place. The dogs, Tempête and Tonerre, lay on the rug before the fire, remarkably well-behaved. Continue reading →

FFXIV: The Demon of Meracydia

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So I might not have the spoons to play the actual game FFXIV right now, but I still have the spoons to consume content! So I finally read the Chronicles of Light and omg I love it (e.g. kicking my feet in excitement whenever Alisaie says something sassy). One thing I like is that since the stories often don’t reference any specific place, it’s easy to know and accept that Eorzea is far larger than the maps we get in-game (I’ve always known/had the opinion that game maps are miniature approximations of what reality could be, and there are many good reasons for doing that instead of trying to Log Horizon it and making humongous maps, but like Eorzea’s supposed to be the size of like Europe, isn’t it? So if you compare travel times across my chapters I’m sure they’re wildly inconsistent and that does bother me a little). I’d like to incorporate that more into my fic, but I’m so literal that it’s difficult for me to extrapolate. I also finally watched the Noclip documentary, and wow – I knew the overall story of 2.0’s creation, but I have even more respect for the team now.

Lol I don’t do mods but I appreciate the fact that this one exists (changes the collar of the Alpine Coat from a ruff to a stiff collar, much sexier on Aymeric.) Also I heard there’s a VR mod for FFXIV, I need a VR headset now lol. I’ve always wanted to be totally immersed in this world!

(Been watching Honkai Star Rail videos and taking inspiration from those flamboyant anime fight scenes lol)

No new armour for Achiyo, still using level 40 mithril set. I really like it. (She does wear a helmet now tho)

Chapter 42: So Much for Retirement

 

Chapter 43: The Demon of Meracydia

R’nyath prowled through the back alleys of the Jewelled Crozier one evening, hunting senses fully alert, yellow eyes gleaming. Behind him stalked Vivienne, an ominous brooding shadow, surprisingly soft despite her heavy armour and indelicate tread. Continue reading →

FFXIV: So Much for Retirement

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The Alexander chapter! The story’s not bad but I don’t have any particular attachment to it, so let’s just focus on the kickass music! Every single track from these raids is groovy AF.

Chapter 41: The Fall of Diabolos

 

Chapter 42: So Much for Retirement

Aentfryn poured himself a mug of tea and sat on a simple wooden chair by a simple wooden table in a simple wooden hut he had built himself in the Dravanian Hinterlands. There was room and to spare out here, and it was a beautiful land. He’d carefully picked a spot on a little island on the Thaliak River, close by a gorgeous clear blue lake, not too near Idyllshire and the remnants of Sharlayan, but not too far from it, either. Continue reading →

FFXIV: The Fall of Diabolos

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It’s the Chuchupa chapter! And it’s really long! If Mhach is based on Gaelic, then the ‘mh’ is pronounced as v. I think. Although the Mhach wiki page shows the Japanese name translated into romaji as ‘Maha’ so I guess they didn’t know that.

I’ve been sitting on 95% of this chapter since the end of November, when Nanowrimo ended; I went on vacation for a bit to recover from a busy fall season, and then came back and things were even more busy (I got a promotion I don’t really want and it’s giving me insomnia whoo) and I’m just not that invested in either the level 60 24-man raids or the 8-man raids. Hence why I’m going to get them both out of the way before we continue with MSQ. This chapter is kind of fillery, tbh, but I can’t be bothered to work on it any longer.

Did you know that once you beat the 24-man raids, then you have 90 minutes to look around the level?? It’s really cool! You can see a ton of things that you’d miss otherwise! (Including some parts that maybe you aren’t supposed to look too closely at XD ) I went in to both Weeping City and Dun Scaith with Yllamse and we had a great time speculating on the design choices of the levels.

Also yooo my Vivienne cosplay blog post is finished!! (contains slight spoilers for her personal story after the main photoshoot)

Chapter 40: Il était une fois…

 

Chapter 41: The Fall of Diabolos

Achiyo went down to the drawing room the next morning to find R’nyath and Chuchupa waiting there for her. “How did it gooo~?” R’nyath asked in a sing-song voice, his ears perking up and tail curling into a question mark. Continue reading →

Vivienne Urselmert Cosplay Part 1

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At last I have gotten around to writing about the cosplay I created last year. I have just been 1) SUPER busy, and 2) still dealing with travel blogs until this point because those are more memory dependent than this. So hi, I actually had the fortitude to create a cosplay last fall! I wore it to the annual RCCO Halloween concert, of course, and to work for an entire week so as many of my students/choir people as possible could see it.

I knew that I wanted to do a cosplay of Vivienne Urselmert, my Dark Knight from Final Fantasy XIV in order to complete my trifecta of Hot FFXIV Ladies (the sweet one, the noble one, and the dark one), and having previously attempted to begin with creating the greatsword and failing, I decided to not start with that. (So there will be a Part 2, hopefully next/this year, when I build a Cronus to go with this outfit!)

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Belgian Christmas 2023: Utrecht

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Ghent

After Ghent, we didn’t go anywhere for like a week. There were certainly more touristy things to do in the Low Countries, but like I said before, my main objective was not to be a tourist. But we did discuss things we could see in the future, such as the Maastricht Natural History Museum, in relation to which I learned that the mosasaur is named after the Meuse (Maas) River which was absolutely shocking to me. Also shocking is the controversial history of the first mosasaur skull ever discovered, which French soldiers yoinked in 1794 and the French government has refused to return ever since, citing that someone was paid (though those circumstances are, from what I understand, dubious). Another place might be the historic pump Museum de Cruquius, the largest steam engine in the world, apparently.

So we read books, played games, listened to music, and cooked food, drank alcohol with the food occasionally. We watched the birds at the bird feeders in the mornings, Tharash has four bird feeders on his deck as well as a water dish. I did not get much creative writing done. That’s fine, I was in rest mode. Continue reading →

Belgian Christmas 2023: Ghent

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Antwerp

So to get to Ghent, as we did only two days after Antwerp, we did have to get up rather early because we had to take the train from Antwerp. We decided to go on that day because the weather was going to be nice. While I was in Europe, it was super windy pretty much every day, and it rained quite a few days, so if we were going to go places we wanted to go on not-rainy days.

We did not take this advice from the tourism website, but that’s okay:

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Belgian Christmas 2023: Antwerp

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Okay so you know I visited Europe last summer to see Germany, but I went again at Christmas. Tharash had come to visit me the previous Christmas (for some reason I didn’t take any pictures of that? I guess everything was too normal for me to take pictures of) so I was like “trade!”, and I had never been to Europe in the winter, and I just wanted to see both more in-person Tharash and more Europe. But this really was a vacation to unwind, not to sight-see. Still, I took a bunch of pictures.

First I had three flights to get to Schiphol, so I took some pictures of Canadian clouds. It was interesting to fly over Thunder Bay, but I wasn’t at a good angle to take pictures of it. But it was interesting to me when there were sudden edges to endless fields of cloud, for instance. And the first picture you can see the shadow of the cloud, I think.

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The Devil’s Holiday Special

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This is a little Christmas-themed one-shot about my Sith Inquisitor, Murlesson, who I previously wrote about in my massive Inquisitor-story-rewrite, Devil’s Due. This event was hinted at in the original epilogue of Devil’s Due; I ended up not keeping that epilogue, but the material in it I’m going to recycle later, as Murlesson/Aristheron/Akuliina fans may be interested to know that I’ve begun writing a sequel to DD called The Devil You Know. I will probably not publish anything for a long time as my writing process can be very time consuming (I started writing this holiday fic last April), I still haven’t played the game past Ilum, my ambitions for the story arcs are high, and my workload is as bad as ever, but hey some bits of the start of a draft exist (and even some snippets for a third fic to follow that!).

An important change: you may recall I had established Pyron’s family previously on Ziost. This was a mistake. I knew Ziost was important to the Empire, but I didn’t know it was the ice version of Korriban until I started writing this fic (back in last April, actually). : P And now that I’m determined to put them in a super normal North American-style suburb, that really doesn’t fit! How can you have a lovely cheesy special white Christmas Life Day if the entire planet is always cold? (suburbs are the city version of cancer but many people grew up with them, so I thought it would be neat to use them here.) But seriously, does the Empire have any nice planets?? (Besides Commenor and Kuat, apparently? Which in my stories I developed, not BioWare : P )

I keep putting Sith Lords in domestic situations because it’s funny. Hands up if you want a full-on coffeeshop AU where everyone’s still Sith? (Or a sequel to Something to Prove : P) (I’m kidding I don’t have time to write either of those)

 

A Sith Lord’s First Life Day

Darth Nox got out of the taxi cab and looked around at the houses surrounding him with an amount of trepidation that surprised even himself. For someone who was used to cities filled with skyscrapers, looming, impersonal, and seething with activity, he would have thought himself easily equal to this very simple environment. Continue reading →